I’ve read that gasoline was known for years as a by product of the kerosene distillation process but originally too volatile to be used. Eventually someone came along and figured we could use it and we know what happened after that.
So my question is, during the distillation process do we go ahead and continue distilling crude the same way we did to make kerosene with the goal of obtaining gasoline?
In: Chemistry
So, there are a lot of misconceptions about how we get Oil products from the ground. We all think of the image of black liquid popping up from a spot in the ground, and then we just heat it, it becomes gas, and we’re done.
But what Oil Extracting, Mining, fracking, etc. get from the ground is something called “Crude”. Crude, rather than being one substance, is actually a super viscous mixture of many different fuel sources, all with different properties. It’s messy and super inconsistent from place to place.
So we take the fuel to a refinery, and heat it a lot. This is because all of the different “things” in the crude boil at different temperatures. So in this way, we split the crude into many different fuels.
So to say Kerosene is a “by product” of gasoline is really a half truth, as they both come from Crude as a common origin. FYI, in addition to Gasoline and Kerosene, this same process gives us stuff like Butane, Propane, and other more gaseous fuels.
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